This Blog is about the Seattle Thunderbirds Hockey Team, the Western Hockey League and hockey in general. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Seattle Thunderbirds or their management, or the Western Hockey League or their management.

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Tyler Hunnex - I started/founded/began Let's Go Birds in September of 2007 after feeling like my favorite Junior Hockey team needed more discussion and analysis. I'm statistically minded, forever frustrated by the Tbirds and my all-time favorite player was #10. I think I'm funny and my writing would probably disagree. Follow me on Twitter @TylerHunnex.

Jon Whiting - Jon joined the Let's Go Birds team in the summer of 2013. His passion for the Thunderbirds is as big as any fan I've ever met. His two kids are named after former Tbirds and his favorite all-time players were Patrick Marleau and Olaf "Ole" Kjenstad, who he swears is the best pure scoring Tbird ever.

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Hockey Challenge 2014

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2.21.2011

A bunch of notes...

Seattle wins at home last night coming from 2 goals down to forge overtime and eventually pick up the two points in the shootout. This was a massively important win for the Tbirds as they cling to hopes of the playoffs.

- Here is my version of an "I told you so..." Dave Sutter has improved so much over the course of the season and especially over the course of the past month. At the beginning of the season he wouldn't have even attempted one-timer slap shots and last night he executed a couple of pretty nice looking ones. Give this kid some more time and he should be pretty solid next year.

- Nice to see Seattle have some fight last night and we got to witness the closest thing to a "liney" as I have seen in a while. Of course we didn't actually get 5 fighting majors out of the thing... but hey... it was nice to see the boys sticking up for their teammates.

- Anyone who says that this team has quit playing hard and quit playing for Rob Sumner isn't paying attention. They may not be playing very well and the good outings are few and far between but I think it would be pretty hard to conclude that they have quit considering the way they continued to play hard after falling behind 3-1.

- WHL officiating this season has been horrific on the whole. The WHL is a development league for officials as well as players and it seems like on general observation that there have been a lot of new referees this season... and the results are showing. Let's hope they improve...

- Incredible penalty kill by Luke Lockhart, Marcel Noebels and Brenden Dillon in the first period that saw each one of them give up their bodies to block shots on a 5-3 PK. An incredible shift that inspired the crowd and their teammates. Unfortunately... I did notice that Noebels left the ice after that shift and did not return for the 2nd and 3rd periods... I hope he is ok.

- Last night was another example of why you should never pay attention to the "3 stars" of the game. Bruins goaltender Lucas Gore was not good in the first period and was lucky to escape without giving up a goal while his 64 save shot total might have been inflated by 10-20 shots. I'm not sure who is handing out the shots at ShoWare but they really need to get it under control. Pickard faces a ton of shots... but I'm pretty comfortable saying that his save totals are a tad inflated as well. Don't get me wrong... Gore recovered and played just fine... but as a fellow goaltender I would bet you that he would say that he could have played better, especially in the first period.

Seattle still has a ton of work to do to get into the playoffs but the 2 points tonight were huge.

Next weekend is the 2011 Hockey Challenge. I will NOT be playing in the Celebrity Game. I just can't seem to convince the team that I'm a Celebrity... haha

I will be playing in the Top Contributors game that follows the Tbirds game on Sunday. It isn't too late to get in your donations for this awesome cause and I want to thank everyone who has already donated and those of you that will donate between now and Saturday.

A) In the 2nd half of the season this team has seen a lot of missed games from Travis Bobbee and Ryan Button. On a team that already lacked a ton of depth on the blueline that has been an extremely tough loss.

B) Smoke and Mirrors. Seattle won more games in the first half but they were still being massively outshot and most of their wins were close victories. They weren't exactly hammering people. To me... this is all proof of the thesis I have maintained the entire time. This team as a whole lacks talent and they over-achieved in the first half of the season. Seems to me that if everyone is quick to blame Rob Sumner for the 2nd half they very conveniently forget to give him any kind of credit for the 1st half.

Lockhart has given his all for this team every night, if every player on this team played with as much heart as he does we probably wouldn't be having this conversation daily. The question about players quitting on Rob, I do think some have, some don't care. I'm certainly not going to base it against beating the other worst team in our league who just finished a 3 in 3 against Portland and Tri. The players are going to play doesn't matter if they like the coach or not, some people still have pride in what they do. I personally think a coaching change should happen but after the season, not sure how Russ is going to manage to deflect blame with three straight rebuilding years with the same coach. I probably missed it on a post before Tyler, but we all sit in different areas and all have different views of what is going on. I want to know from Tyler and all others, aside from if you think he is a good coach or good person. Do you believe this team can be a serious WHL championship contending team for a long stretch with Rob Sumner behind the bench? ... And why you think he can or can't make that jump.

To be quite honest... I'm not really sure. I think there were a couple of years (2006-2008) where the team had the talent to make a deep run in the playoffs... but they weren't in a position financially to take a gamble and trade away their draft picks and young talent (at the time those would have been players like Steve Chaffin and Erik Fleming) to really, REALLY go for it.

And I think in the past that has always been a very valid complaint about the team. We never really seemed to "go for it" because they couldn't afford to go through the types of years that they have in the last 2 years.

I think the next time the team has the talent to make a run... ShoWare Center allows them to be more aggressive taking chances. Now whether that happens or not??? I have no idea.

So in conclusion... not sure on whether Rob would be able to take us to the next level. He hasn't been able to do that yet... so at this point I would say no.

Isn't it a double edges sword? Maybe he has coaching ability to take a talented team to lofty levels but hasn't had the the uber talented roster of players available. Marc Habscheid took Kelowna to the Memorial Cup but he had a very talented roster. Now with Chilliwack, he may miss the playoffs for the 2nd straight season. So did Habscheid become a bad coach in a few short years or is he short on talent?

In my opinon, he's never had a Memorial Cup/WHL championship caliber roster. When is the last time this team drafted a player the caliber of a Brayden Schenn or a Ryan Howse, a Jordan Weal or a Tyler Johnson? Someone who is a threat to score any time he touches the puck? And I say drafted, not traded for. The last player I can think of who was like that on a T-bird roster was Brooks Laich and they traded for him.

They have had some very good 1st round picks but there have been too many that weren't and not enough supporting cast when they do manage to make very good use of the high first rounder (Marleau, Hickey). Holloway, Metcalfe, Spiller, DeCecco and Endicott were OK first rounders but four of these were drafted in the 90's and so was Marleau. Troock looks to have serious potential if he can heal up. Too many Balt, Chaffin, Fleming, Durand, Simpson, Hanson, Hansen and Sanvido's in between the occasional good 1st round pick. Right now we have Fleming and Sanvido on the ice as 1st rounders and all though they can play they certainly aren't taking the team anywhere you'd expect from 1st round talent. Chaffin didn't do much and then his career was ended due to injuries, Hanson would be our 20 yr old first rounder and he never did much in this league. Recent 2nd rounders - Pickard excellent, Boyer C-, Muth - bust, Ashdown Bust. That is no way to build a team. If Farwell didn't rent players over the years this team wouldn't be able to tread water. I have not seen him show that he can build a very good team through the draft at least not in recent history. Buck stops w/ Farwell, people are kidding themselves if they think a new coach will make all the troubles go away. Look at the success Nachabuer is having in Spokane, he never had that level of success in Seattle with Farwells roster. Not saying it wouldn't be OK to try a new coach but don't expect a Cup or anything close to it w/ Farwell as GM and his current talent evaluators.

Spokane has had winning teams with their last thee coaches, same with Kelowna. Trio-City with their last two coaches. The difference....those teams draft and or trade well and give those coaches talent to work with.

Thank you for asking. I won't know my final total until probably some time next week and I will try to update but I have been led to believe that I'm getting very close to $1500 and my team is pushing close to $30,000 total.